Michael DeVries

Getting to a Better User Experience


The Difficult Years (2000-2001)
The biggest difficulties we faced were staff turnover (about 75%) and the amount of weekly work. The first two years were spent trying to understand the processes, keep the program going, and encourage staff and parents that the program would be undergoing positive changes once we understood how it should happen. In the meantime, changes in design of the staff and parent preparation materials would make life a little easier each week. Other notables included:

• Staff to child ratios trended towards 1:4 overall, but during core team activities could be as poor at 1:7. Overall, we had 7 staff members to 24 kids.
• The program cycled every two years. While we had books that provided repeatable content, there were no materials set up to get everyone comfortably through the evening (e.g., keeping regular attendance) or through registration (e.g., registration forms).

• Staffing: Required 3 staff members per group (rather than 1), and additional parent participation. This changed the staff to child ratio to about 1:2, and never dropped below 1:3 during core team activities.
• Processes: Registration was streamlined, reducing time to register and individual and number of weeks to register everyone.
• Program materials: Weekly check-in and other attendance information was combined and made a fun child activity rather than a parent's responsibility. Staff/parent weekly preparation materials, even though in draft form, greatly decreased staff work required during the week.
• Staff turnover was reduced by noticeable levels.

• Staffing: Reached a staff to child ratio high of 22:45, and often at 1:2 during core team activities. There were even times when we could move a few staff into preparing for the next week to further cut down on the next week's work.
• Processes: Registration, check in, child progress, weekly setup, and other processes were fine tuned for efficiency.
• Program Materials: Weekly preparation materials, now available weeks in advance, simplified information staff and parents needed to know.
• Staff turnover was reduced to approximately 20%, with staff quickly signing up to be a part of the next year's activities.

• It was very clear that by the end of my term as Director, the satisfaction from kids, parents, and staff was significantly better than when we started. This was evidenced by long term staff involvement and parents that brought their kids a distance to participate in the program.
• The long hours of putting together materials that could be reused year over year have not been lost. The program as I designed it and most of the materials are still used today, more than a year later.
• While the initial program gave more focus to the children taking crafts home to their parents, we changed the focused to "less glitter glue, and more from me to you." With this philosophy, the children accomplished many more altruistic activities, including:
• Several hundred pounds of food to a local food pantry
• Making necklaces to send to Haiti for children in the orphanages
• A web site was created to support core needs of those seeking to learn about the program. I facilitated an ideation session with parents and staff in order to understand those core needs and how the information should be organized.
• The registration form removed the need for four other documents, and became useful for quickly tracking information needed throughout the year.
• Staff members used their natural skills and personalities to easily fulfill their roles as we moved away from a "one person fits all roles" mentality.

• Program Management
• Manager of people
• Process and materials design
• Long term commitment (7 years)
• Listening and empathy
• Dedication of many long hours of work to get the job done